Rapid Diagnosis: Vomiting Blood

The dispatcher reports that the patient is vomiting blood. Hemataemesis if you want to be technical about it. It could be a whole bunch of things right? … Well yes it could. Before you e-mail me to say that you can’t believe I missed Bolivian Hemorrhagic Fever, here’s one web site that lists 113 possibilities. But if you want to play the numbers, it’s going to be one of four things. And if you want to play “stump your partner” you can narrow it down quite a bit based on your patients age and disposition. There are four things that tend to cause a person to vomit blood. Before you click on the little “read more” link, how many can you name? Sure, it could be Mucormycosis or rattlesnake poisoning, but before you go there consider: Contents Esophageal VaricesGastritisBleeding Peptic Ulcers Mallory – Weiss SyndromeEsophageal Varices The blood supply to the esophagus is primarily drained through the esophageal veins. However, some of that blood supply drains through superficial veins that line the interior of the esophagus. These veins drain into the portal vein and create a problem when the patient develops portal hypertension, as seen frequently in our alcoholic populations with liver cirrhosis. Over time those minute esophageal veins can swell 100 to 200 times there original size and eventually rupture, causing gastric irritation, vomiting of frank red blood and hypovolemic shock. This one gets a fair amount of pla...
Source: The EMT Spot - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: EMT Source Type: blogs